Fundraiser tickets available now

On Thursday, September 11, we are hosting an evening of live music and dinner to support the Music Maker Foundation. The dinner will be held at a private, mountainside house in the San Juan Mountains of Telluride. Tickets for the dinner are on sale now, click here to purchase. $750 of each ticket benefits the Music Maker Foundation and can be tax-deductible as a charitable contribution.

The 2025 menu for the Music Maker Fundraiser Dinner is here! Chef Eliza Gavin, presents the menu for the event with Champagne and appetizers to kick off the evening while attendees interact with the musicians before a special performance from Trenton Ayers. Dinner with the artists to follow immediately after the performance.

Meet Chef Eliza Gavin

Chef Eliza is the restaurateur and award-winning chef of 221 South Oak in Telluride. Raised in Richmond, Virginia, Eliza ran her first kitchen while attending college. After graduation from the University of the South, Eliza moved to New Orleans hoping to expand her blossoming culinary career.

Her unique flavor palette reflects on experiences of growing up in the South, working at prestigious fine dining establishments in New Orleans and Napa Valley, attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris France and from the Rocky Mountains.

After returning from France, Eliza worked on a cookbook before moving to Telluride. She then spent a winter working at 221 before she bought the restaurant in the autumn of 2000. Aside from owning her restaurant, Chef Eliza also earned a spot in Season 10’s Top Chef competition on Bravo. She has also competed on Beat Bobby Flay and Chopped. She has written 3 cookbooks, including an all vegetarian book named, Hold the Meat. Eliza has opened a fast casual restaurant in Telluride named LIZ, after her grandmother. LIZ serves healthy options at reasonable prices.

Meet Trenton Ayers

Featured musician of the Fundraiser Dinner

Hill County blues guitarist and bassist, Trenton Ayers is the son of Earl “Little Joe” Ayers, an accomplished bassist who played in Junior Kimbrough’s band. Little Joe gave his son a bit of advice about becoming a professional musician. Don’t do it, he said. Good thing Trenton didn’t listen.

While primarily a purveyor of the blues, Trenton’s instincts take him into many genres, a tip of the hat to his mother, who loved ragtime, Hill Country blues and easy listening. All music, Trenton says, can be traced to the blues and that is the thread that is stitched in every tune he selects for his performances. He calls himself a tone chaser and it is thepursuit that defines his music.” People like to keep me in the blues, but I’m an all-over man,” he says.

He's got a Best Blues album Grammy nomination under his belt for his work as part of The Cedric Burnside Project on their 2015 album, Descendents of Hill Country. Prior to that he toured with his own band, Electric Mudd. The future is wide open for this musical shape shifter. Bring it, Trenton!

Music Maker Foundation

Since their founding in 1994, the Foundation has assisted and partnered with over 500 artists, issued over 200 albums and reached over a million people with live performances in over 40 states and 32 countries around the globe. We are honored to work alongside this compassionate organization in an effort to ensure the continuity of some of the purest and most honest forms of music in American history. Want to get involved? You can change lives with a simple music shop purchase or by making a tax-deductible donation today.

"What is worth keeping is worth passing on. Help preserve American music"